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Biaxial Nematic Phase In Bent-Core Thermotropic Mesogens, Bharat R. Acharya, Andrew Primak, Satyendra Kumar

Satyendra Kumar

A biaxial nematic phase had been predicted with D_2h symmetry, wherein the mesogen’s long and short transverse axes are simultaneously aligned along the two orthogonal, primary and secondary directors, n and m, respectively. The unique low-angle x-ray diffraction patterns in the nematic phases exhibited by three rigid bent-core mesogens clearly reveal their biaxiality. The results of x-ray diffraction can be readily reproduced by ab initio calculations that explicitly include the bent-core shape in the form factor and assume short-range positional correlations.